


Magnets

by Mierke



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, one day I will write the epic these two deserve, today is not that day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 12:45:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19062979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mierke/pseuds/Mierke
Summary: Penny and Sheldon didn't make sense, but they happened anyway.





	Magnets

**Author's Note:**

> Non-canon compliant. Penny looks back on her relationship with Sheldon.   
> Written for the prompt _Cleave_ for the [100 Fandom challenge](https://100fandoms.dreamwidth.org/).

They didn't make sense.

Penny was well aware of that fact, well aware of the stares they encountered wherever they went. It wasn't as if it hadn't been obvious to her at the beginning, but it still rankled when other people looked at them as if they were an anomaly, a mistake. As if they added "Lanky nerd with superman T-shirt" to "Gorgeous blonde in a cocktail dress" and ended up with _undefined_ , impossible.

People had tried to break them apart for so long. When she had met his friends, they had gawked at her, whispering among themselves, asking her to "blink twice if you've been kidnapped", asking Sheldon whether he'd been replaced by an alien. Sheldon had accepted it all as normal, and Penny hadn't wanted the first meeting to go badly, so she'd kept her mouth shut.

When afterwards she'd asked him what that had been all about, he'd struggled to conjure up a smile and had said something along the lines of "they think I'm a robot with no emotions or sex drive" and she had wanted to go back and hit them over the head with the definition of demisexuality and a handbook on how to be a decent person. She didn't know why he still called these people his friends, but she could see it in the lines of his face, in the timbre of his sigh, the way he felt he owed them for putting up with him.

She had shown him that night, thoroughly, that she was not merely 'putting up with him'.

He was peculiar, sure, and every once in a while his strict schedules put her on edge. During those first tumultuous months of their relationship, when he wasn't exactly living with her but did spend an awful lot of time at her place, this had often ended in screaming rows on her part and deathly silences on his, where he'd disappear for days on end and she wasn't sure where he'd gone. They had eventually managed a compromise, adding an "Anything Can Happen Thursday" so she wouldn't jump out of her skin.

It always took them a while to understand what the other needed, their personalities so different that it often threatened to tear them apart. But once they figured it out, once she realised that what he needed when work was going awful was not a distraction but a sounding board, someone who would let him talk and talk and talk, and who'd ask him questions he thought obvious but hadn't articulated out loud yet, it became easier to help him. She understood that his condescending tone was his way of establishing that he was still smart, damn it, even though this problem eluded him, and she let him talk down to her when he was figuring things out. After all, he was the smartest person in pretty much every room.

Together they figured out that was she needed after another botched audition was not statistics on how many actors were unemployed (90%) or how badly actresses were paid compared to actors (30 cents to the dollar), no matter how comforting Sheldon thought he was being. When he started handing her warm beverages and offered to watch The Bachelor with her (though he reserved the right to add commentary), that's when not getting the part started to hurt less.

When he met her parents, her dad had taken her aside and asked her how this walking broomstick was supposed to protect her, and she reminded him she didn't need any protecting (she was still proud of herself for not taking the opportunity to show her father how little protection she needed). Her meeting his mother had been almost worse, with Mrs Cooper taking every opportunity given to reminisce about how little she had expected her son to ever settle down, and to inquire - again and again - when they were getting married and when they'd start having kids.

Sheldon sat his way through it, taking it like he'd taken his friends' commentary in stride, and Penny had to force herself to sit on her hands and be quiet. She knew Sheldon loved his mother, and she knew this politeness his mom had instilled in him wasn't anything Sheldon would appreciate her breaking, but it was hard. She had met so many people in his life who hardly treated him like a person and she ached for him.

Eventually, she'd shut them both up by quietly but assertively stating that this was their life, and that she would propose to Sheldon when she felt they were both ready for it and not a moment sooner. Both Sheldon and his mom had looked at her in astonishment then, and Penny had forced herself to calmly meet their gaze as if she hadn't just betrayed something she herself hadn't even known.

That had been a couple of years ago, though, and the discomfort in her belly had quieted down to a soft rumbling of excitement. When she looked at engagement rings (engagement rings!) all she could think of was the love she was feeling. The box she'd present the ring in had been an easy choice once she discovered the TARDIS box. The ring itself, though, had been harder. She wanted something Sheldon-y, something that would show him how much he meant to her. She had hesitated over a C-3PO ring but didn't want Sheldon to think she believed him a robot. In the end she had settled on a ring that would let you feel your partner's heartbeat; romantic for her and comforting for him (though she totally expected him to freak out the first couple of times he tapped the ring when she was working out and he wasn't aware that's what she was doing).

She was waiting for him to come home, and with a small giggle she thought it was a good thing Sheldon didn't have her ring yet; her heart was beating out of her chest and was surely cause for concern. It wasn't that she was afraid he'd say no exactly, but she wasn't sure whether he was ready, or whether he'd deem this thing to be too much of a distraction. These bouts of insecurity would still hit her sometimes, when she wondered when he would get up and leave, to pursue that Nobel without her, because she was holding him back. It was ridiculous, she knew - he had once told her she was his muse, and she held on to that with all of her might when she got dragged under by her own mind - but it still made her a little jittery now.

"Hello, Penny. What's for dinner?" It was Anything Can Happen Thursday (she could hardly propose on Halo Night, now could she?) and Penny felt such a rush of love when her hopefully-soon-to-be-husband came in. He was just so... him.

"I made your favourite, spaghetti with cut up hot dogs."

"Yay! What's the occasion?"

Sheldon sat down at the table, and Penny put some food on their plates.

"Sheldon, sweetie-" she began, but she stopped when she saw Sheldon twitching.

"Did I do something wrong?" he asked. "Is this some kind of way of placating me before you can dish it out?"

Penny had to stifle a laugh - experience had told her that laughing would be the wrong thing to do right now; no matter how she meant it, he would take it as laughing at him, and the very last thing she wanted him to think was that she was ridiculing him - and got up from her seat.

"I was planning to do this after we had dinner, but I don't want you to be worried while eating. That's bad for your digestion."

"Thank you, Penny."

The fact that he didn't immediately demand she tell him what she was planning just showed how far they'd come. She had earned his trust over the years, and her chest constricted at how happy that made her. She went over to his side of the table, and got down on one knee.

"Sheldon," she began, and she could see understanding dawning in his eyes. "You and me, we're like magnets. If you only look at certain parts of us, the things most people see when they look at us, we repel each other. Your scientific mind repels my belief in the impossible, and my lust for the spontaneous repels your need for a strict schedule."

Some muscles had started twitching in Sheldon's face, and Penny smiled at him.

"I'm not making scientific sense, am I?"

He shook his head, started to say something, then closed his mouth again.

"Go on, let it out, it will make you feel better."

"Magnets repel each other because they're the same. The things you just mentioned were opposites and thus should attract, if you're following magnetic logic."

She could see his muscles relaxing.

"Better?" she asked, and he nodded.

"Yes, continue."

She took the ring box out of her pocket, and Sheldon's eyes widened as he took in his beloved blue.

"But we were able to look beyond that, and see the parts that attract," she continued. "I fell for the way you are always you, no matter in what situation. The very thing that seems to repel most other people, is what makes my heart beat faster. To me, your eccentricities make you more than human, not less than, and I would love nothing more than spend the rest of my life with you."

She took a deep breath as she opened the box.

"Sheldon Lee Cooper," she said. "Will you marry me?"

He didn't immediately respond, but Penny hadn't expected him to. She patiently waited for him to work this through in his mind, to look at it from all angles, to weigh _marriage planning_ against _spending my life with Penny_ and _distraction in my quest for the Nobel_ against _having someone to talk to when I come home_ and _deviating from the path I had planned_ against _making my mother happy_ and so many more Penny couldn't even think of.

"Sheldon?" she asked, when the silence took too long and her knee was starting to ache, her patience wearing thin and her insecurity rising.

"You make my world fuller than I ever thought it could be," Sheldon whispered, and the awe in his voice made Penny tremble. "Yes, I will marry you."


End file.
